GOLDEN — Austin Schmidt and his Windsor teammates didn’t let Broomfield’s early defense, which took away the Wizards’ dribble penetration, bother them. They just turned to the 3-point shot. Boy, did they ever.

Schmidt hit three of Windsor’s nine 3-pointers and the ninth-seeded Wizards reached the Class 4A state boys basketball final four for the first time since 2003 by upsetting top-seeded Broomfield, 72-58, on Saturday at Lockridge Arena on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines on Saturday. Schmidt finished with a game-high 20 points and Connor Ervin added 18 for Windsor (22-4).

“It feels amazing, feels great. We had this dream since the season started,” Schmidt said. “Hopefully, we get that state championship now.”

First things first though. Windsor (22-4) must contend with fourth-seeded Pueblo West, a 56-48 winner Saturday over Longmont, in a Thursday semifinal at the Coors Events Center in Boulder.

The loss denied Broomfield (23-3) a fourth trip to the final four since 2006.

“We knew their tendencies and stuff. We knew if we come out and play defense we’d have a good shot of winning,” Schmidt said.

Windsor, which had its season ended a year ago by Broomfield, went on a 7-1 run to end a nip-and-tuck first half with a 32-27 lead. It never trailed again.

“We went back and watched last year’s film when we played them. The thing they did to us that hurt us was setting the ball screen,” Windsor coach Dustin Duncan said. “We had our bigs step out on the edge, get a guy underneath to help the helper and didn’t throw that bad pass like we did last year. I think we did a good job on defense as a whole. Everyone was buying in and doing a good job stepping up, helping each other.”

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